Playing House: A Novel
35th Anniversary Edition with Foreword by Philip Roth
Trade paperback | 176 pages
ISBN : 978-1-58195-225-4
On sale May 6, 2008
$14.95
Playing House: A Novel
"A kind of unsparing honesty that makes you shiver but also stop to admire."
— Washington Post
"Jarring, shocking, brilliantly written, and surprisingly funny."
— The Philadelphia Inquirer
When Playing House appeared in 1973, Publishers Weekly hailed it, "A probing descent into madness that will fascinate the same audience that appreciated I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." This nationally bestselling story of one woman's struggle with the lasting effects of a childhood sexual relationship with her brother shocked American readers, and is a literary work of enduring quality and value.
In his foreword Philip Roth writes, "The traumatized child; the institutionalized wife; the haunting desire; the ghastly business of getting through the day — what is striking about Wagman's treatment of these contemporary motifs is the voice of longing in which the heroine shamelessly confesses to the incestuous need that is at once her undoing and her only hope."
Excerpt
Can't concentrate. My mind is wandering over him crouched on top of me, over his shoulders to a summer day again, always back to then when a room was filled with sun gold, when the walls were white, when the window glass as crystal clear and there was sunshine always dancing on the floor. Heavy brown silk rugs made a border all around the bed where he pinned me there and said that if I told he'd beat me with the branches of the tree and I never told, no matter what he did I never told, he was my brother.
Click here to read an extended excerpt from Playing House.
More praise for Playing House
"A haunting tale."
— The Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A dense, rich novel."
— The Pittsburgh Press
"The story is passionate and moving, the style flowing and lyrical."
— Minneapolis Tribune